Starting Small

Made it out Saturday for the small game opener.  Bagged 1 squirrel in an hour and half or so of wandering between a few of my duck spots to see if they held water--and they do, though there's a lot of mud between the bank and the edge of the water this year.  Saw a few other bushytails, but couldn't get a shot off.  I wasn't prepared for having to shoot in a brief window of opportunity when  a squirrel came into the open. 

I guess I wasn't sure what to be prepared for, seeing as I've never really hunted squirrels before.  My dad and I used to walk through the woods looking for small game of some kind, any kind,  but rarely saw it, aside from the times we stumbled on some sweet pat covers.  I did enjoy it though and want to do a lot more of it.  A lot of hunters begin their careers with squirrels and move on to larger or more technical kinds of hunting--I'm regressing to it after sampling upland and waterfowl.  Not that I'm giving up either, but I could come to very much appreciate slowly wandering through the woods mid morning, stopping here and there to listen, scanning the treetops to pinpoint the source of the rustling in the leaves or clatter of branches.  Not the adrenalin or drama of waterfowling, but I think a range of moods and timbres will enrich  in substance a hunting career that is, regrettably, foreshortened in time.

For this season, my hunting may not encompass much more than waterfowl and squirrel, or any other small game that wanders across my path.   Ran out to Waterloo last Thursday to look over the spot I was considering for a deer hunt in November.  Lots of trails running through it, but it would be hard to set up on one, especially for a complete newbie like me.  Maybe another season.  If I can become proficient with squirrels this year (and continue getting better at waterfowl), that's enough growth as a hunter to satisfy me for now.

What I wish I were doing

I'm so ready to shoot a waterfowl right now I'm calculating whether #2s or BBs would be needed to penetrate the frozen ducks at supermarket.  Reading tales like this one doesn't help.

I'm actually planning to expand my hunting this  year.  Squirrels when the season opens in a week and a half, and just possibly deer in November.  Possibly.  Shot some slugs out of the 870 at the Sharonville range on Monday and decided I might need to wait on the whitetails until I can do better than 7" groups.

Whatever happens...here's hoping for more wild meat on the table this fall.

Head and Hands

Lately I've been enjoying the time at my cutting board more than my time at the keyboard, or with a book in hand.  And I'm not even cutting up freshly caught brook trout in some wilderness camp. Just things like greens, chicken, onions.   I've been enjoying my time picking and restaking tomatoes, stir frying fresh kale, experimenting with mixtures for a new favorite consumable, the protein shake.  And the simple pleasures I've been savoring extend past food.  Started lifting weights two weeks ago, and have liked feeling the simple  operation of muscle, though mine are still mostly where they started.  So much of our bodies we take for granted. Mowing the lawn, fixing a corroded drain fixture last weekend were quite satisfying, as was sorting out duck decoys and stacking them in new storage bins.  After I finished these I  felt satisfied--affirmed, even--as I rarely do with my job.  Which didn't go well last week. 

Some of the most tiresome parts of my job take place at the keyboard, so my recent preference for these simple acts may be no wonder.   But the more interesting ones do as well--writing (not always pleasant but a top shelf pleasure when it works), taking notes on reading, even simply reading articles or e-books.  Chatting with students (honestly, I think I my one-on-one conferences go better online than face to face).   These things are expected of me not just because of my job description but because the kind of person I am.  Intellectual, verbal, analytical.  That's how people saw me for long before I started assembling letters after my name and that mark me now among people who know  me (though "outdoorsy" usually comes to their minds too).  So really, smart guy stuff ought to be a passion, and even before that a reflex.  Menial labors (and gardening and cooking qualify as such, though they are often labors of love as well) should be necessary chores to be quickly dispatched before getting back to the real work, or at least to cerebral pleasures.

Now, I think that handwork gets short shrift in a culture that ranks white collar occupations above blue, and digital products over material ones.  I have great respect for craftspeople, farmers, mechanics, everyone who can do things with things.  That goes for people whose avocations result in fine things--trout flies, quilts, charcuterie, furniture, for example.  The results of the manual tasks I've immersed myself in lately aren't that admirable.  My cooking is rather slapdash, as is my lawncare.  There are actually some important home maintainence tasks I've been letting go, and need to take care of before the frost comes. All the same, those I do work at are what makes me happiest at the moment.

I suppose my greatest pleasures--the outdoor sports, or simply spending time outdoors--are handworks, or at least pleasures of the senses, no matter how much reflection and strategizing they include.  There was a time though when these things entered into the life of my mind.  I taught courses on environmental literature. I devised writing courses where students explored watersheds, food, neighborhoods (which provide another avenue for my attraction to terrain).   At the moment I don't have the option to teach those, which doesn't bother me so much as that the teaching I am doing seems uninspired and rote.

It has seemed less so, regardless of what I was teaching, when I held close and lived daily with ideas and evocations of those hand--and eye, ear, nose,  and footfall--pleasures that give so much of my life its shape.  Reading Thoreau or Rick Bass and their rest of their literary crew.  Reading what others have said and disputed about them.  Writing about nature literature and philosophy, or writing about my own outdoor excursions.  Writing in Find the River.  In doing those thing, hand and head join, and the rest of my work receives a charge from it.

Through busyness or laziness, I've let them slip apart, and it shows in disparate parts of my life.  My question now is, how can I join head and hands again?

Maybe I've already answered that.  Maybe I'm starting to do it.  At least the question has formed, and even that is giving me a lift.

Am I Wearing a Sign

...that says I know absolutely nothing?

While I was in Bob Linsenman's excellent fly shop in Mio last week, I had an interaction of a sort I periodically do in fly shops that makes me wonder.  Does this happen to anyone else?

On the stream Tuesday night, I'd seen a bunch of iso spinners gathering over a riffle at dusk.  So I asked the clerk (not Bob) this:

"There were a lot of iso spinners out last night.  Do they ever bring up a steady rise of fish later at night?  Or will anything hit them if you fish them blind?"

"What you want to do," said the clerk, pulling an iso nymph from the fly bin, "is take one of these and sweep it across the riffles in the afternoon.  They've been taking these really well."  He spoke in a firm, fatherly voice of the sort that might instill confidence in the struggling tyro

"Right," I responded.  "That usually works for me," I added, figuring I should toss in something to establish some trophy water acumen.  The reason I'd come to the shop was actually to buy some of those.  "But what I want to know is, do the fish hit those isonychia spinners in the evening?"

"The best thing," the clerk continued,  holding up an ephoron soft hackle,  "is to run one of these off a dropper behind it."  He extended the fly toward me.

I declined, telling him I already had four of those, and just reached around him to get a couple of the iso nymphs.  I wasn't going to push the point any further.   All  I needed was a simple "yes" or "no."  Maybe his response to me was actually a backhanded "no," but why not answer the question directly?  Was it one only the most ignorant newbie would ask and unworthy of an answer?

I don't think that was the case.  Like I said, something like this happens from time to time.  I will ask a fairly specific, sometimes technical, question about hatches, presentations, or something else, then receive a very general answer, such as you might get from some "Intro to Fly Fishing" kind of book, and that you would really want if it was your first or second season.   My attempts to distinguish my question from that sort that requires that kind of answer don't seem to penetrate the clerk's awareness.  I wouldn't go so far as to say it's insulting, but it sometimes makes me think twice about patronizing stores where that happens again (though rest assured I will continue to shop at Bob's). 

This is actually I pattern I've encountered dealing with clerks in all kinds of stores, actually (though most often in fly shops), and also with tour guides.  There are certain questions they are used to getting and answering.  And those are they questions they hear when dealing with their customers, even if they're not the ones customers always ask, and they give the answers they usually give, even if they're not the ones sought.   I think this comes from people working on autopilot instead of paying attention to their situation. 

Granted,  there are a lot of jobs that make this easy to do, and I'll admit that as a teacher, I've done it myself. But having caught myself, or been caught at it by students,  a few times I've tried to listen to every question as closely as possible and give the kind of response that a fresh and substantive question deserves--even if I've heard the question a thousand times and it could probably be answered by reading the assignment a little more carefully.    Doing that, regardless of where you work, is one important way of Being Here Now. 

Au Sable 8/15

One of my favorite trips of the year is my late summer visit to the Au Sable trophy waters--it's given me some of the best days of fishing I had in some seasons.  I've had some of those magical days when I can pull two or three trout from every riffle I ply with iso or ephoron nymphs. Flying ants falling into the river all afternoon and trout feeding on them in every smooth run, just like during a mayfly hatch.  I've fished heavy midday hatches of BWOs, and ephoron emergences at dusk that ranged from good to spectacular.

Other times it's been a bust.  Drifting all afternoon in my pontoon without getting a strike.  Short strikers all day long.  Or waiting in vain for the ephoron hatch.  While I've never had a complete skunking, I've sometimes managed only one fish in the net.

Wednesday fell somewhere between feast and famine.  Got on the river around 2:30, having spent morning and early afternoon working (I've become one of those people who takes a laptop into the woods...still beats working at home).  Started at the riffle below Loud's rest stop, where I've had some very good days.  Some feeders showed at the lip of the riffle and along the edges of the V falling down from it, and got some of them to strike on an ephoron soft hackle.   Alas, they turned out to be chubs.  After an hour I did pull a 12" brown out of a pocket below the riffle.

Next I went down to 2 Fish Flats (a private name for a spot that as far as I know has no public one), which yielded 3. Then it was One Fish (not sure what other feature to name it by), which lived up to its name precisely.  I've wondered whether I ought to dub some hole Fifty Fish.  One day years ago 2 Fish Flats very nearly approached that.

Ate supper in the woods, then went to a spot below Perry Creek to wait for the ephorons.  When I got there a little after 7, some trout were rising to BWOs.  The feeding wound down around the time I'd switched to a light leader, but I still fooled one rainbow.   No ephorons emerged at sunset.  I was waiting with the emerger tied on, and when I saw a solitary rise downstream, I thought I'd work it through the run anyway.  The only subsequent rises I saw were when fish smashed my fly--three rainbows and one solid 14" brown.   "Smash" is no exaggeration here--my fly would be gliding along with the current when I felt a hard pull, immediately followed by the sight of a trout thrashing on the surface of the river.  There is nothing quite like that experience to draw you fully into a moment of your life.  Buddhism offers that admonition to "be here now"; hooking and playing a substantial trout offers no other option.

Between the last day of my UP trip and the Mio run this week, August has been the best month of my season, meager as it was by the standards of most fishermen, including myself, or at least the self who used to get up north twice a month in summer.  Almost makes seeing the close of summer worth it.

Back to school Monday.  Into the maw of the working year once again. 

Live from Mio, 8/15

Greetings from the Mio McDonalds...

The school year is bearing down on me--I'm back at it next Monday--and the trip to Mio I'd planned for the end of that week is off thanks to an abruptly called meeting.  But I'm well along in my preparation, so yesterday I snuck off for a 2-dayer up on the trophy waters.

Didn't get up until about 6 last night, and after waiting out a rainstorm in the Paddle Inn and setting up my tent, I didn't get in the river until nearly 8.  Which would be fine for catching the ephoron hatch, which was my objective in coming up, but none emerged.  Not surprising since the temp dropped about 10 degrees and stayed there once it passed.  Did see a few  late isos on the wing, but none falling and no feeding.  I did catch one planter brown and 'bow on a beadhead ephoron soft hackle.

I didn't want to leave things there, so I drove up to the south branch for a mousing excursion--hadn't done any night fishing this year aside from my pathetic hex hatch venture.  I chose a stretch where I've caught some good browns at night before, but hardly recognized it in the low water, at least so far as I could see the river's features in the half-clouded starlight and feel where it touched my waders.  There was a long stretch of exposed timber along one bank that in ordinary summer water conditions would be at least half submerged.  When I walked over to that bank  to retrieve my mouse after snagging it on the wood, the water barely covered my boots.

I did land a 13" brown when my mouse swung across a chute, but that was it.  A long deep bend (which was still about knee deep) that was the spot I most wanted to fish turned up nothing.

Made it back to camp around 1.  By then the clouds had cleared and I saw stars like I hadn't all summer.  Too little time outdoors, and usually when the moon was strong.  Cassieopia and the Little Dipper stood out like spotlights.  Lightning flashed in the north from time to time, but the promised clearing had finally come and today is cloudless, still, and warm but not scorching.  Looking forward to a good afternoon on the river.

Ontonagon/Houghton Cos., 7/29-8/3

My wife and I just got back from a week in Kenton, MI where we took a hiking/writing/fishing retreat.  We've come here off and on since 1999, always staying at the Two Rivers Motel & Cabins. This time we spring for a cabin.  Clean, cozy, and under $400/wk.   It's been a long time since I've come back from a vacation feeling more relaxed and simply centered than I feel now. Which is good because my nerves were more or less in tatters before we left.

The weather was great--for things other than fishing anyway.  Temps generally stayed in the upper 70s/low 80s and the sun never slipped from view We hiked 3-4 hours every day and had raindrops for only about 30 seconds on day one.  Not even enough to wet my shirt.  Cruised around looking for wildlife and checking out random sights otherwise, cranked out some decent prose in the intervals.  Raspberries were everywhere. Thimble berries were a bit scattered and not quite at peak ripeness in most areas where we saw them.

As for the fishing...slow doesn't begin to describe it.  Water temps made it a losing battle from the start.  On the first night I went to Sparrow Rapids on the East Branch of the Ontonagon.  The thermometer read 69.  Took a few small (4-5") brooks and bows on nymphs and attractor dries.  Saw literally a couple of caddis in the air.  This was approximately the bug volume on every outing I made. 

The next morning (Monday)  I fished the middle Ontonagon above Agate Falls.  Water temp ran 69-70.  In the quietest sections a few trout were feeding on midges, at least I think.   Landed a couple dinkies, briefly hooked  a slightly larger one.  Tuesday night I went to the Jumbo...Wednesday night to the middle branch...Thursday afternoon to the middle branch and bluff creek...in all cases the water temp was 70 or above.  Probably shouldn't have been fishing trout at all in those temps, but wasn't set up to do much else.

Finally, on Friday morning, I went to a different spot on the east branch.  Water temp: 64!   And the previous night really hadn't been cooler than nights earlier in the week. Fished downstream with an olive wooly bugger and in an hour took four 9-10" inch trout, 2 brooks, 2 bows.  Not a haul for the ages, but stellar for this trip.  I even saw a very thin trico hatch, though nothing seemed to be feeding on it.   When the sun cleared the trees my streamer twitched through the brush unmolested, so I switch to some terrestrial and attractor patters, with and without droppers, but took only trout in the sardine class.

Aside from finally putting some sort-of-respectable fish on the line, Friday's outing reminded me of why I love to fish trout.  This season, plus memories of the last two, actually have me wondering about that sometimes.   The silence of the stream, the cool, still morning, the beauty of the woods at the peak of summer lushness, and the chance to slow down the mind to take it all in.  Not to mention trout on the line.  In short, being in a solitary, beautiful place, seeking out some of the most vibrant creatures to inhabit the world.  I guess every trout foray offers those things, but they get lost in a lingering fog of frustration, and among growing distractions in my life.  Maybe I needed the time away from home and work and the internet (which was self-imposed...we did have wi-fi but I didn't use it) to be ready to appreciate fishing again.

I was hoping to exercise that appreciation two weekends from now, but the first email I read upon returning announced meeting that Friday which basically nixes the idea. So I look to September...

Dry Spell

A quiet month here.  I have spent a lot of time behind the keyboard, mostly on very un-FTR material.  I have written a couple of things about hunting I might put up later if I can put them more blog-friendly form.

 I've only fished once since my last trip.  That was on a daytrip to Kalamazoo to visit my dad.  Ended an outing on Gull lake with three nice rock bass, also a mid-teens largemouth my father released.  Not much more than I would have expected given the heat, though when we we pulling out, someone else loading their boat said they'd caught about thirty rockies. 

So it goes.

I've intended to hit the Huron, but between work and domestic obligations I haven't.  And here  we're moving into some of the biggest events of the Huron's season, the hex and ephoron hatches. 

Fortunately, my wife and I are headed north this weekend and I should be able to get back into the trout groove.  Saturday we're going to Grayling to watch the start of the canoe marathon, then on to a cabin in the western U.P.  where we'll spend a week on Sunday.  Not primarily a fishing trip, but I should be able to get out a little every day.  Stories and, yes, pics on return. 

Proactive Protection Against Parmalee Catastrophe; Clever Fishie

A piece of encouraging news from the Freep yesterday.


The Anglers of the Au Sable aren't what you'd call a go-along, get-along gang.
Dedicated to protecting the Au Sable River and its watershed, the 700-member organization has, at various times in its 25-year history, vilified politicians, shamed bureaucrats and sued the pants off those they perceived as threats to the river.


So in the latter half of 2010 -- when awareness began to spread through the Anglers' ranks that Enbridge Energy Partners, the company responsible for the 800,000 gallon oil spill in the Kalamazoo River that July, had another aging pipeline handling up to 22 million gallons a day that crossed under their beloved trout stream near Luzerne [as best I can tell, somewhere in the neighborhood of Parmalee bridge] -- you might have expected things to get prickly.

But they didn't.

Instead, through a series of meetings and discussions between Enbridge officials and leaders of the Anglers, a somewhat unorthodox partnership was born. One which has resulted in the company installing a remote-controlled shut-off valve at a cost of $300,000-$500,000 on the south side of the river, visits to Grayling by Enbridge CEO Patrick Daniel and surprising praise for Big Oil from hard-line conservationists. 

Read the rest.


This group has done amazing things to protect the AS watershed, and it's nice to see them getting out in front of something like this.   Much preferable to after-the-fact lawsuits.

*******

In other news, it seems whale sharks have taken bait stealing to the next level:



Wonder if a small clouser might fool one of those--or would I have to cast a net full of them? 

Post of Evil x 2 (& Ominous Portents for Duck Season)

My 666th post on Friday the 13th!  I've draped myself  with crucifixes to prevent channeling some demon while I type  (and here the camera on my laptop is broken...so sorry...)

Actually, I saw something yesterday that's even more troubling.  Early in the morning I went to look at some of my waterfowling spots and found them either dry or super low on water.  The pond where I planned to ambush  some geese on the early goose opener now consists of a mud flat with scattered puddles, which may mean I don't hunt early goose at all. It shouldn't be a shock, I guess, given the dry winter and the lack of rain and high temps this summer.  Opening day plans are going to change drastically unless we get September monsoons, and I won't hold my breath. 

This in a year with a good hatch, too.  Hope any ducklings reared in these spots managed to get to bigger water. 

And as I sit blogging on the day of evil...I wonder if I could sell my soul for a weekly deluge?

Book Review: Call of the Mild, by Lily Raff McCallou

Hunters and anglers often rankle when people refer to their pursuits as “hobbies.”  Most, myself included, are okay with  “sports,” but for some even that’s too watery a description, evoking people tossing balls around courts or mowed fields.   Outdoorspeople may protest that that fishing and hunting are passions, engrossing disciplines that demand long study as well as the best that body, heart, and mind can give.    They are labors that can come to define their aficionados.   They become dominant influences on how their practitioners see nature and society, and may dramatically reorient the views and values of those who adopt them as adults.   Call of the Mild: How I Learned to Hunt My Own Dinner  by Lily Raff McCallou offers a compelling demonstration of that last effect.   A  self-conscious and unassuming memoir, Call of the Mild nonetheless has the potential to upend the assumptions of both hunters and nonhunters about what it means to hunt (or not) and to simply live in a world where all of us—humans as surely as their furred, feathered, or finned relations—eventually become prey.  

In keeping with a pattern that must have been common in America a couple of centuries ago, The author’s evolution from gun-fearing nonhunter to gun-toting hunter began when she moved west.  An aspiring screenwriter in New York  paying the bills as a filmmaker’s assistant, Lily Raff was drawn to journalism  by the idea of getting paid to write stories  every day but lacked the credentials for a job at a paper in the city.    Figuring she had a better chance at joining a small town paper, she applied for a reporter position at a Bend, Oregon daily and was hired.   Initially she intended only to gain some experience there before returning to New York, but Bend complicated her plans.  She met and married Scott McCallou, a passionate fisherman and professional environmental advocate, for starters.    The longer she stayed, the more she realized she was putting down roots (a idea that initially was as scary to her as picking up a gun); McCallou felt, she writes,  like she was “marrying Oregon.”   She became deeply interested in the lives of people in struggling rural communities outside Bend.  Loggers bespeaking admiration for a favorite tree and hunters devoted to land conservation forced her to reconsider her notions of what it meant to be an environmentalist.  Encounters with hunters provoked questions about relationships to animals, especially those on her dinner plate, she had taken for granted.  Could she eat meat fully aware of its origins and of her responsibility for taking the lives that fed hers? 

To settle the question she began hunting.   Her answer would be an unequivocal but hard-won “yes.”   McCallou took the steps to begin hunting methodically and deliberately, but she had her share of anxieties and conflicts along the way and she isn’t afraid to let them show.   She had to let go of sterotypes about hunters and hunting she freely admits she took from the movies (including, yes, the nortorious Bambi), overcome severe gun shyness,  confront astonishment among relatives and friends when she informed them of her new venture,  and endure an acute bout of self-consciousness as a rare woman (and for that matter, an adult) in a hunter safety class.   Fellow hunters (including some prepubescent hunter safety classmates) are in most cases key to helping her overcome her doubts and discomforts through the helpfulness and safety-consciousness she finds among them, as well as the deep sense of ethics and the concern for land and wildlife they demonstrate.  McCallou’s greatest uncertainly, understandably enough, is whether she can actually pull the trigger on a game animal when the moment comes.  She delayed it by leaving her gun at home when she went on her first hunt in the company of some neighbors, though when the moment arrived, she found it curiously exhilarating.  (The feeling would become a familiar one since despite her initial dread of guns she turned out to be an excellent shot.)  Guilt would follow—as it does for most hunters—but she would come to see this as an expression the hunter’s respect for the animal taken.   What she felt most strongly after her first kill was a sense of the world becoming much closer than it ever can be when kept at a safe, bloodless remove.  

Yet as her hunter’s apprenticeship continues, the world’s risky and predatory dimensions get much too close for McCallou’s comfort.    A series of unexpected and sometimes inexplicable deaths among her family and friends stuns her and stirs doubts about whether she can continue to kill for sport and an occasional dinner.  She also begins to have doubts about beginning a family.  Her doubts give rise to an unpretentious but far-ranging meditation about mortality as a shared bond among creatures and a cause for humans no less than deer or pheasants to live as alertly and intensely as possible.  This carpe diem is a call not only to individual determination (though McCallou found her work ethic sharpened considerably  during this harrowing period), but to engagement in every way possible with the lives of all kinds in our surroundings, seeking the wealth they offer for both body and soul.   In light of these reflections, hunting becomes a means not only to eating ethically or connecting with a place, but to living in awareness of and contact with the cycles of life and death that give and take everything that makes our time on earth matter.    There is, as McCallou acknowledges, an ancient, aboriginal wisdom in these ideas.   However, her statement of them,  connecting the tooth-and-claw realities of the wild world to the familiar human tragedies that modern society and technology screen from view or divert us from much of the time, offers one of the most powerful contemporary defenses of hunting I’ve seen. 

Hunting immersed McCallou in a new way of seeing the world and a new culture, yet she stands consciously apart in some ways from most of hunters she encounters, a distance that gives her a critical perspective on the sport and its dominant ways of thinking.   She takes hunters at large to task for focusing excessively on issues like gun rights and threats to hunting from animal rights advocates while giving short shrift to dangers posed by the extractive industries and commercial development, and for reflexive hostility to the predators that help create a healthy ecosystem.  Though she oversimplifies her case and overlooks some marked exceptions, it is largely well founded and carries a message that needs to be heard.   It perhaps is an easy case for a newbie hunter raised in a liberal enclave on the east coast to make, though liberal anti-hunters and environmentalists don’t get off any easier.   Hunters, she reminds them, could be some of their most valuable allies in preserving the environment and resisting wanton consumerism.   Even those who couldn’t imagine ever killing an animal and eating it have ample reason, McCallou affirms, to put aside stereotypes of hunters and simplistic beliefs about the cruelty and backwardness of the sport to not only tolerate but support and honor hunting.  

Of course, as McCallou’s case demonstrates, some who couldn’t imagine shooting their supper eventually do just that.  If any recent book is likely to inspire a non-hunting reader to do the same, this is it.

Manistee & South Branch Au Sable, 6/27-29

A certain stretch of the Manistee above  M-72 gave me very consistent hex fishing for four years.  Some nights were better than others, but there were always bugs and there were always rising trout.  Some nights I fished in a crowd, some nights I had it to myself.  But last year I spent two nights there and saw good numbers spinners but no flies on the water.  This year wasn't even that good.

Wednesday, a few hex spinners started to show around ten, but a swarm never appeared.  Nothing emerged later.  Thursday I never even saw spinners.  That's really all there is to say about hex hatch 2012.    I'd been lulled by previous experience into thinking I'd found a surefire hex hole, but I stand thoroughly disabused of that notion. 

Ready for a change of pace, I spent Friday on the Au Sable's south branch in the upper Mason Tract.  Hexes are done on the south, so I figured I would enjoy a nice solitary evening catching brookies on blue winged olives, and have at least a shot at a late isonychia spinnerfall that would entice some larger trout.  Found plenty of rising trout from 7:00 on, but had a hard time connecting.  I watched the water for a while after wading in and saw a couple of flying ants tumble into the flow. I put one on and quickly landed a decent brook trout.   Believing I'd found the secret, I tossed the ant at a few other feeders and received only one short strike.  A few olives were flying around so I tried a #20 dun and drew more short strikes.  Many of these rising trout were quite small, and I didn't cast to the little ones at first. Finally I did out of desperation, and even they spurned me.  Getting refused by a 6" brook trout is one of the keener humiliations an angler can suffer.

Around 8:00 I was seeing quite a few small brown caddis in the air so I tied on a reasonable facsimile and got nothing, even though around  I was seeing a lot of splashy rises.   Only about half an hour later, as the feeding began to slow in the run I was on, did I find an emerger that would have worked.  By then I was seeing more smooth rises, as well as more BWOs in the air (though still not very many), so I tried my spinners and duns again, and again was refused by each fish that took notice of my fly.  Many didn't.

A bit after 9 the run seemed to have gone dead.  I had seen just a few iso spinners, so I cut back my leader and tied one on.  I started wading back to where I'd walked in only to see another group of active feeders two runs up.  The rises were quiet again, and stirred a few bubbles  but I didn't see anything on the surface the trout would be eating, even with the aid of my headlamp.  Having barely been able to see to tie the iso on, I wasn't going to attempt threading the hook eye of a #18 or 20 olive.   I cast the spinner to a few of the risers and caught one, a whopper 8" brookie.  Hooked a couple more briefly before feeding slowed and I kept moving upstream. 

Close to my walk-out point a heard a couple of other rises.  I can't say if they were consistent or not because  in the dark I couldn't see them, and the sound of most of them would have been drowned out by the fireworks that had begun exploding almost continuously once the sun had set.  Where I was, the tract is bordered by cottages, and most of their occupants  were apparently exploiting Michigan's recent legalization of high powered fireworks.  I kept drifting my iso through the run where the rises had sounded, and occasionally between the fusillades I heard more.   Sadly, I didn't hear the ones that counted.  Twice when lifting my line at the end of a drift I felt a fish pulling on it.  By that point it's too late to set the hook.  Except for the damn fireworks I would have landed a couple of good fish.   

I wouldn't have minded trying a little longer, maybe moving to another spot, but the blasts from beyond the tract kept coming.  My ears hurt from them--how loud would they have been close up? 

Another frustrating night of fishing, but at least I felt like I was back in the game.  If I was up there again tonight and someone told me I had a 50% chance of hitting a monster hex hatch on the Manistee, I think I'd still go to the south branch and try to crack the riddle of those twilight rises.   A little further from town, though. 

TDD Therapy, Stat!

Was over in Kalamazoo fishing with my dad on Gull Lake yesterday--left camera in dad's car, so no pics.  But a decent day in spite of being hot and bright.  Ended with a dozen decent size panfish (Kristine and I just ate my share for lunch), and a few just shy of legal bass. 

Trout deficit disorder (TDD) is setting in big time, so I'm headed to Grayling later this afternoon to catch the tail end of the hex hatch on the upper Manistee.  That's the plan, anyway.  Superhot days ahead, meaning, probably, superlate nights on the river. 

May get to check in while I'm there.  If not, see you sometime this weekend.

Goose Banding, Pte. Mouillee 6/22

Every June, Michigan DNR staff and assorted volunteers band canada geese at Pte. Mouillee State Game Area.  I started hunting there last year and got to love the place.  I'm not going to give up my little marshes and potholes in the nearby rec areas, but something about big marsh hunting makes it engrossing.  Maybe the sheer number and variety of ducks on the wing, maybe a frustration at failing to call them in that leads to determination, maybe just the openness or expanse of them--so many possibilities to explore.  Whatever its appeal, Mouillee is a place I want to get as involved with as I can.   Went on a cleanup there last year, also to an open house just before waterfowl season started.   I wish there was a conservation group dedicated to it, such as other major waterfowling sites (Fish Point, Shiawassee) have. 

For now I'll settle for the odd volunteer project.  Notice about the banding day went up on Michigan Sportsman (see link at right) a couple weeks ago; last Thursday I was finally able to confirm, and on Friday night I got to bed early and set the alarm for 4 AM (shades of duck season!).  I made it to the area's headquarters minutes before the scheduled 6 AM start time, though we lingered a bit before getting started.

The banding process worked like this:  DNR employees and volunteers would take kayaks out into the marsh in areas where geese were sighted and drive them onto land in a spot of high ground.  Once there, folding pens we set up and volunteers would drive the geese into the pen; other volunteers formed a cordon stretching back from the edges of the pen to prevent the geese from  running off.  Two DNR workers stayed in the pen after the geese were in and the gates were shut to pick up birds and hand them to volunteers to carry over to the banders.  They would clip on the band, record its number, then turn the goose loose.

The geese ranged from babies still in fuzz to old veterans with necks as thick as a swan's.  And most were quite docile when picked up, which surprised me a little since they can be nasty tempered, even aggressive when I run across them along rivers or lakeshores.  The little ones put up no fight at all.  The guys in the pen just handed them off to whoever was nearby and they were as compliant as kittens in the hands of whoever carried them to the banders.  The adults often did struggle a bit, so the DNR workers would fold the head of each goose under one of its wings before giving it to someone. 

There were a lot of kids there, members of a boy scout troop and children of some of the adult volunteers. They carried most of the geese to the banders.  A little wary of the geese at first, they were eager to do the job once they saw the geese weren't going to hurt them.  Larger, feistier geese were handed off to adults.  Toward the end of the day I took one that had bitten one of the guys working in the pen.  It struggled as he passed it to me, then settled down for a while.  There was a backup of geese ready for banding, so I had to hold it for five minutes.  It was quiet for a while, but about a minute before I got to the bander it started thrashing around. I kept my arms firmly around; I actually appreciated feeling its struggles.  Usually when I pick up a wild animal it's dead or shortly will be.  Feeling the warmth and the full strength of one of the creatures than helps give me life was satisfying in some undefinable way.

Much as I enjoyed the day, my services weren't especially needed.  There were at least forty people out there, and many of them spent a large share of the morning standing around. There wasn't much they could do unless they forced themselves into the action.   The kids took care of most of the work, and they probably needed the experience more. 

The head biologist at Mouillee said geese banded there have been recovered from Saskatchewan to Alabama.  Very few things I do will have an impact felt that widely.  So my contributions, however meager, were worth the early wakeup and the hour's drive.

Huron River 6/21; (Huge) Fake Plastic Fish

Went to Island Park for a couple of hours last night.  Water super low--lots of bare gravel bars in spots where the water is knee high at typical midsummer water levels.  Dragged in a bunch of baby smallmouth on an OWB; switched to a black/orange cherno ant when I got into some quiet water and caught three rock bass that were 6" or so--semi-respectable fish.  It's a wonder I even got those since the ant was under near-constant assault by bluegill that couldn't get it in their mouths. 

Beautiful rainbow last night.  It actually did sprinkle for ten or fifteen minutes while I fished, though my shirt didn't get wet (left my rain jacket at home); the rain was too light.  Refreshing after a couple of back to back 90 degree days.

***********

Some folks at the Rio +20 climate conference must have gotten extremely bored, creative, and  thirsty.  Giant fish sculptures made from discarded plastic bottles:

If one of the conference attendees blows his/her travel grant money on the nightlife,  the deposit on these could fund a plane ride home.  More cool pics here.

More is More

"Biodiversity" is a sacred word among environmental advocates, often for aesthetic rather than scientific reasons.  To many, there is something intrinsically beautiful and right-seeming about a landscape in which a wide range of species occupy a diversity of ecological niches. The greater the variety of species and relationships between them in a place, the richer and more beautiful the place.  To lose species and their roles in the landscape represents to many environmentalists an unquantifiable diminution of its beauty or an interruption of an organic harmony--like painting over a few burghers  in "Night Watch,", say.   Theodore Rooselvelt famously likened the loss of a species to the loss of one of the works of Shakespeare.

I'm sympathetic to this view.  Oh hell, I share it.

But recently some University of Michigan researchers found biodiversity can pay off in ways even ardent anti-environmentalists can appreciate:

Genetic diversity within a species can increase the yield of commercial crops. Diversity of tree species increases production on timber plantations. More fish species mean more stable yields for fishermen. 

Diversity in the types of plants that grow together also can make the plants more resistant to disease and invasive species, and in some cases make them pull more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

More on their findings here.


Maybe an ardent anti-environmentalist wouldn't appreciate the carbon-reducing function of biodiversity ("Anthropogenic climate change is a myth!" he brays...), but if as many suspect we are facing a future of escalating demand for ever scarcer natural resources  and food supplies are increasingly threatened, maybe keeping around as many life forms as we can is more than just a pleasant notion.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/06/07/151533/biodiversity-helps-sustain-human.html#storylink=c

Foodie Get Your Gun

So what's up with the recent reviews up books by people who took up hunting in adulthood because of dietary rather than sporting interests?  Certainly they're within the bounds of staple FTR content. But these authors are representative of a broader movement that's caught my interest: a growing interest in hunting among young urban professionals who have little or no previous experience with it, entering the sport out of a desire to limit their dependence on the industrial food system and eat the freshest, most sustainably sourced meat they can.

They're interesting to me partly because they represent a notable exception to the trend of declining participation in hunting.  And they don't fit the profile of most hunters, at least as I understand that.  Hunters for the most part have conservative social/political sensibilities, and however dedicated to conservation they might be, often are antagonistic toward broader forms of environmental protection and activism.  There exists what might amount to a red/blue divide between more typical hunters and the newer breed, a cultural clash noted by some members of the latter. 

Describing her initiation into hunting  Juliana Hanle recalled sitting in a hunters' safety class of mostly "worn looking" white men and hearing, among other things, lectures on the ethics and traditions of hunting. "Hunters have a duty to conservation, to protecting land and resources for sustained use," one of her instructors exhorted. "A hunter kills only as many creatures as a healthy ecosystem can afford."  But quickly he reassured the class that "conservation is not environmentalism."   Reflecting on the moment, Hanle supposed that to the instructor, “'environmentalism'” means something too extreme, irrelevant, and yuppie—a little like me, staring at him from the aisle two rows back."

Yet Hanle didn't  believe the divide between her and her instructor and classmates was  absolute and unbridgeable. "[F]rom where I sit," she writes, "conservation is environmentalism. In an America where food is produced on fear-inducing scales and where we throw away our meals as easily as we consume them, the idea of being conservative in what you kill and eat is countercultural."  She admired that "Most of these men were preparing to enter a hunting community sustained by tradition," a  tradition that meant their families "have been eating sustainably for generations."  In them she saw "signs of an unspoken, deep respect for the natural landscape,"  and wondered what other common ground she and they might have.

As I've written before, the division between outdoor enthusiasts who engage in "consumptive" activities (i.e., hunting and fishing) and those who don't is a tragedy for conservation, or environmentalism, or whatever you want to call it.  People who ought to be working together on so many things too often don't, partly because they can't get past negative assumptions and stereotypes about the other.  Sometimes there are valid reasons for the antagonism between them--some backpacker types are rabidly anti-gun, and some hunters sincerely believe you can never have too many roads cutting through the woods.   Some urban non-hunters people think most rural people are ignorant rednecks, and some rural hunters think city people are effete snobs.  The foodie hunters exist in the middle of these "two cultures" in the outdoor sports.   They represent some hope that a middle way of thinking about the outdoor sports--connected to tradition but aware of modern problems with how we use animals and how we stress the planet we live on--could in fact become the center.  

Book Review: Girl Hunter, by Georgia Pellegrini

Georgia Pellegrini is on a mission to save humanity—or at least to inspire readers of Girl Hunter to recover a lost measure of their humanity by harvesting their own meat from forest, field and sky.   This project had its origins in a request to kill a turkey with her bare hands.  A stockbroker-turned-chef, Pellegrini was working for a restaurant that operated its own farm when she and several fellow cooks were dispatched to harvest free-ranging turkeys for the evening’s menu.   Though a lifelong meat eater, Pellegrini realized then she didn’t have the stomach to kill her own food, and froze on the spot while her colleagues chased the birds down on foot and cut their throats. She admits the experience briefly swayed her toward vegetarianism.    But the process of cleaning a turkey, which she describes in lingering and intimate detail, stirred “a dormant, primal part of me,” she writes; it “made the kind of sense that I could feel deep in my marrow,” and revealed to her what it truly meant to be an omnivore.

 It ultimately launched her on a quest to learn “if it is truly possible today to live off the best your hands can produce.”  Girl Hunter tracks Pellegrini’s pursuit of this question through forays around the US hunting deer, pheasants, turkeys, and wild hogs.  Her short answer is “yes,” though by the end of the book this finding seems almost incidental.  Hunting, she discovers, is not only practical but transformative.  With a nod to the longstanding thesis that hunting among early humanoid groups gave rise to the intelligence and social organization that defined our species, Pellegrini contends that hunting can give people a fuller sense of their humanity by immersing them in the wild world that is their natural home and the true source of their nourishment.   She foresees that such awareness “will propel a shift in how we view and interact with the world we eat in,” with the result that “the kind of food we demand, as omnivores, will never be the same.” 

Despite these sweeping convictions, Girl Hunter is at bottom a story of personal awakening, a conversion narrative of sorts.  Over the four years of hunts recounted here, Pellegrini found herself profoundly changed—humanized, as she sees it—by active participation in nature.  She saw herself relating to landscapes in a different way by virtue of turning to them for sustenance. She learned and came to value an array of skills she’d never known existed.   Animals ceased to be mere  ingredients and became instead individuals, teachers,  and objects of immense respect.   Stereotypes about hunters and rural people absorbed during life in New York and Paris fell away as she spent time among generous, learned,  and amiable guides, ranchers, and planters.    

The vivid portrayals of the individuals who initiated Pellegrini into hunting are among the most engaging parts of the book, conveying their knowledge, care, and passion about hunting, even when these are stated silently or indirectly.  Their examples show too how one’s life as a hunter and the rest of his or her life can shape each other.   Her descriptions of landscapes immerse readers in the sensory experience of hunting, and she does not overlook the discomforts that can come with a day afield.  Being a chef, Pellegrini naturally describes the preparing, cooking, and consumption of wild game in great (and deeply sensual) detail.   For those wishing to follow her example, each chapter concludes with an assortment of recipes for preparing the animals hunted in it.  

Unlike Tovar Cerulli and some other literary hunters, Pellegrini doesn’t spend much time pondering the ethics of hunting.  Its historic role in human societies is justification enough for her.   Neither does she devote much of the book to considering her position as a woman in the largely male world of hunting, despite the title’s calling attention to that.    Aside from an unwelcome “slap on the ass” at a wild game dinner party (a sensation all too familiar to her from work in brokerages and kitchens dominated  by men), her entry into what is still mostly the domain of men appears to bring  few or no complications—a good thing, of course, but then why headline the issue?  She acknowledges that as a woman hunter she is atypical, mentioning that she seldom encounters women in hunting situations.  But what about those she does?  How might their experiences add to what it means to be a “girl hunter”?

By advocating hunting  as a means to eating more mindfully, Pellegrini aligns herself with “foodie” authors like Michael Pollan.   And by presenting hunts taken on sprawling private ranches or hunting preserves, in the company of affluent planters or retired Berkely academics, leading to dinners replete with fine wines and Cuban cigars, she is open to the same charge of elitism often lobbed at Pollan and his counterparts.  The recipes Pellegrini offers—Poached Dove and Pears in  Brandy Sauce, or Pheasant Tagine, for instance—don’t offer any defense, and certainly don’t make hunting seem more practical or approachable (though perhaps these may be inevitable in a book by an elite chef).  But, at the risk of stereotyping a bit,  hunting is likely to seem more alien to sippers of Chateauneuf du Pape than to fans of Pfeiffer’s.  Georgia Pellegrini may be just the evangelist to bring them into the congregation of the camouflaged.

Smartphones Go Stone Age

From Grist:

If your nature hike goes seriously awry, your cell phone will probably be your best chance of survival — if you can get signal, you can let people know where you are. If you can’t get signal, well, it is basically a hunk of metal. But, it’s a hunk of metal that can (if absolutely necessary) be busted up and used to make a signal mirror, a compass, a spear, a fire-starter, and a fishing lure. Saved by the cell!


Yes, a fishing lure!  The article advises:  Use sharp bits of metal for fishing lures, because fish will eat any damn thing.

I want to fish where this guy does. I've been wasting money buying multiple versions of the same fly because on the streams I frequent the fish may prefer emergers or duns,  caddis with shucks or without, brushy or streamlined nymphs...   In all seriousness, I'll bet the contents of my fly boxes are worth at least as much as some of the fancier smartphones cost.

Over the years I've found a couple of discarded (probably dunked) cell phones along rivers.  I've just picked them up and thrown them away after I got off the water.  Now maybe I should start collecting them in my vest in case of emergency.

Of Rivers and Home Repairs

For several years I've watched cracks in the bottom step of the stairs leading down from our front deck widening, felt the it (and the treads above it, to a lesser extent) sagging further each season under my footfalls.  Last Thursday,  while descending the stairs to go to our shed, roughly the front half of the bottom step broke loose from the beam holding it in place when I stepped on it.  A light kick to the step probably would have splintered off the loose piece entirely.   I didn't fall fortunately, not that I would have been hurt much if I did.  But when the stair cracked I heard my weekend stolen away.   The whole staircase (five steps, plus the stringers framing them) would need to be replaced. 

We plotted out the job and bought our lumber Saturday morning, ripped out the stairs and made some initial cuts in the afternoon and evening.  While tentatively fitting new pieces into the existing deck parts we learned we'd need to make some adjustments we didn't forsee--typical for a project.  Yesterday, following a late start and a return trip to the store, we managed to put the new beams and a few of the steps in place.  We will likely finish tonight, which may be the most notable  aspect of this undertaking.

A lot of projects around our house are "in process."  With some, the process has gone on for years.  My work, Kristine's work and school, periods of disinterest, and, yes, my outdoor pursuits have gotten in the way.  We're trying make headway this summer--living in the state of disorder parts of our house are in is getting old. Frankly, it's becoming maddening.  But things go slowly.

I've commented here on occasion that my compulsion to fish isn't as keen as it used to be.  Presently,  I'd say it's at full strength again.   The few forays for trout and smallmouth I've made this season have whetted my enthusiasm, of course, but lately the contrast between the clutter of home and beauty  of the river world has done so even more.   Fishing at times feels like the sole source of beauty or grace in my life, and the more I confront the shabbiness of my own habitat, the more I want to seek out that of fish, mayflies, swallows, and minks. 

That habitat give an impression of fullness, of completion, markedly in contrast to the ongoing state of incompletion, around my house.  A healthy river (and even the urban Huron largely is one), considered in any given moment, seems to have all it needs--you can see its parts working together to yield an unanswerable vibrancy and presence.  Of course, that's a mistaken impression.  Rivers are the ultimate work-in-process, and to live closely with them means giving over a good deal of one's life, mentally, spiritually, sensorially,  to a process of incompletion.  That process over time often becomes a comfort zone.

I'm not blaming my stalled household projects on my affinity for rivers. But my affinity for rivers may help me to  keep my peace of mind as we  slowly sort out our household disarray.  The current state of chaos around here isn't permanent or ruinous.  Good things still arise from our life despite it.   Kristine and I won't have the home we want if we simply go with the flow of our lives as determined by our jobs or habits, but the presence of things undone need not be a reason for anger  or resignation. Besides, when the projects not yet finished are, others will need doing, just as surely as clouds will gather over a river just shed of a storm.